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Hector Berlioz: Works
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In 1850 he became Head Librarian at the Paris Conservatoire, the only official post he would ever hold, and a valuable source of income.[44] During this year Berlioz ... conducted an experiment on his many vocal critics. He composed a work entitled the Shepherd's Farewell and performed it in two concerts[48] under the guise of it being by a composer named Pierre Ducré. This composer was of course a fictional construct by Berlioz.[49] The trick worked, and the critics praised the work by 'Ducré' and claimed it was an example that Berlioz would do well to follow. "Berlioz could never do that!", he recounts in his Mémoires, was one of the comments.[48] Berlioz later incorporated the piece into La fuite en Egypte from L'enfance du Christ.[50] In 1852, Liszt revived Benvenuto Cellini[31] in what was to become the "Weimar version" of the opera, containing modifications made with the approval of Berlioz.[51] The performances were the first since the disastrous premiere of 1838. Berlioz travelled to London in the following year to stage it at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden but withdrew it after one performance due to the hostile reception.[6] It was during this visit that he witnessed a charity performance involving six thousand five hundred children singing in St Paul's Cathedral.[52] Harriet Smithson died in 1854. L'enfance du Christ was completed later that year and was well-received upon its premiere.
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At home in Paris Berlioz made another determined attempt to win an audience for his music by the formation of a Société Philharmonique, in clear rivalry to the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. This new body gave its first concert on 19 February 1850 with Berlioz as conductor. Despite initial success the society was troubled by internal dissent and by an early shortage of funds, and lasted only until May 1851. But in that period Berlioz had conducted a wide range of music and had introduced some of his own works, notably L’adieu des bergers, later to be the central part of L’enfance du Christ. At its first performance Berlioz attributed it to an imaginary 17th-century composer Pierre Ducré, allowing him to delight in the delusion of his audience. The Société Philharmonique ... gave his Requiem in the church of St Eustache.
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In 1842, Berlioz embarked on a concert tour of Brussels, Belgium from September to October. In December he began a tour in Germany which continued until the middle of next year. Towns visited included: Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Weimar, Hechingen, Darmstadt, Dresden, Brunswick, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Mannheim. On this tour he met Mendelssohn and Schumann (who had written an enthusiastic article on the Symphonie fantastique) in Leipzig, Marschner in Hanover, Wagner in Dresden, Meyerbeer in Berlin.[44] Back in Paris, Berlioz began to compose the concert overture Le Carnaval romain, based on[14] music from Benvenuto Cellini. The work was finished the following year and was premiered shortly after. Nowadays it is among the most popular of his overtures.
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Berlioz was preoccupied at the same time with a half-Revolutionary, half-Napoleonic conception on the grandest scale, which took various forms. Remnants of the 1824 mass, a military symphony sketched out on the journey back from Italy, and a preoccupation with the Last Judgment all contributed to plans for a huge work in seven movements commemorating France’s national heroes, of which two movements were completed in 1835. These do not survive, although they were probably included in the Requiem commissioned by the minister of the interior and performed in the Invalides on 5 December 1837, and ... perhaps in the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, another government commission, performed during the tenth anniversary of the 1830 Revolution on 28 July 1840. Both works exploit Berlioz’s interest in grandiose spatial effects and in the appropriate matching of instrumental forces to the occasion and the place for which a piece was intended. The Symphonie funèbrewas originally written for large military band and performed out of doors. Berlioz later added parts for strings and for chorus.
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Humphrey Searle translated Hector Berlioz: A Selection from His Letters (1966). Many of Berlioz's writings appear in English translation; see especially the translations by Jacques Barzun, Evenings with the Orchestra (1956), and by David Cairns, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz (1969). The best general work on Berlioz is Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and His Century (2 vols., 1950; 3d ed., 1 vol., 1969). Two older biographies are ... useful: W. J. Turner, Berlioz: The Man and His Works (1934), and Tom S. Wotton, Hector Berlioz (1935). Both the Barzun and Turner studies contain detailed information about Berlioz's compositions. For general historical background see Romain Rolland, Musicians of Today (trans.
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A short time after this the choir master of Saint Roch, suggested that Hector should write a mass for Innocents' Day, promising a chorus and orchestra, with ample rehearsals... that the choir boys would copy the parts. He set to work with enthusiasm. But alas, after one trial of the completed work, which ended in confusion owing to the countless mistakes the boys had made in copying the score, he rewrote the whole composition. Fearing another fiasco from amateur copyists, the young composer wrote out all the parts himself. This took three months. With the help of a friend who advanced funds, the mass was performed at Saint Roch, and was well spoken of by the press.
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